People I Read

RSS and Stuff

It was the guns, again

Another week, another mass shooting. As President Obama said, this has all become routine. We hear about these tragedies, get upset for a little bit, and we get back to living… Until the next time it happens. Politicians send their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims and their families, and injury epidemiologists just scratch their heads in amazement. The National Rifle Association sends out their instructions to members and disciples that the Second Amendment is the only thing keeping us from living in a tyrannical dictatorship. And sociopaths and psychopaths swear up and down that the shooting is a “false flag” operation, that it never happened, or that all that was missing was a good person with a gun to keep it from happening.

“Come at me, bro.”

Then I write a blog post about gun violence and the “ammosexuals” almost immediately show up and start throwing around words like “libtard” to somehow prove that they know more about gun control — and how it doesn’t work — than anyone else in the known universe. They tell me that gun control doesn’t achieve anything, pointing to violence in cities where gun control laws are in place as clear evidence to support their thesis. Even if I tell them that there are plenty of civilized countries around the world without free-flowing guns, they revert to name-calling because, well, that’s how they do.

In the analysis of what happened in Oregon yesterday (October 1, 2015), ammosexuals are quick to point out that there must have been “something wrong” with the shooter. After all, who in their right mind would kill people without any motive? This makes the ammosexual feel better by convincing them that the shooter is not like them and that they would never do anything like that. What they fail to recognize, however, is that we are all at risk of mental health problems big and small. None of us is immune to depression, psychoses (induced or otherwise), or anything else that would make us lash out against people with the permanent consequences that come from using firearms.

But all of that doesn’t matter to the ammosexuals and the politicians who serve them. I would even wager that they don’t really care about the Second Amendment. They only seem to care about the rights of the firearm as if the firearm was a living, breathing human being. If something dare compromise the safety of that firearm, they will use whatever means necessary to protect it. Luckily, it has been political pressure and money so far and not guns to defend other guns.

So we go around in circles again and again because no one with any sort of authority wants to do anything about guns. The people on the right of the political spectrum see the Second Amendment as an open invitation to arm ourselves to the teeth. The people on the left of the political spectrum don’t want anyone to be punished for gun crimes so severely that they will think it over several times before trying to own a gun (illegally or otherwise) ever again. Both sides don’t want to do anything about mental health.

Yes, I’m a little upset about what happened yesterday, and I’m sure that I’ll be fine tomorrow. And I’ll probably forget that there are more gun deaths than traffic deaths in Michigan, something you only see in war zones. We will collectively go back to worrying about our fantasy leagues, about the next piece of trash that comes out of the mouth of that “billionaire” presidential candidate, or what we need to do to get away with paying less taxes. Our priorities are not collectively to save lives because, to be honest, people die. That’s what people do.

Once in a while, however, I’ll look at the latest science on gun violence and wonder if we’ll have some sort of awakening where we rally together and go with the science and not with politics or personal feelings. I’d love that. I’m ready for that. Sadly, from ammosexuals to people sold to political idealisms, we don’t want to hear the evidence or follow the science on what can be done. We just want to continue to think that this country is exceptional, and that a few dead children here and there and everywhere is a good price to pay for that.

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

Rene Najera I'm a doctoral candidate in the Doctor of Public Health program at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. All opinions posted here are my own, of course, and they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my school, employers, friends, family, etc. Feel free to follow me on Twitter: @EpiRen

Post navigation

3 thoughts on “It was the guns, again”

Where in the world did you get that Kel tec shotgun?
It’s one of the more insane firearms around, considering its insane capacity.

Back when I was still wearing tree looking clothing, clearing buildings, I was looking for something similar. Bullpup, to better navigate narrow hallways, single tube feed. Had no luck.
Now that I’m retired, I have no need for such things.

Frankly, we really should take all firearms derived from selective fire military service rifles and place them under a new chapter of the National Firearms Act. Any magazine that extends more than one inch below a magazine well, magazines of 20 rounds and greater go with the firearms.
That wouldn’t do much for the AR15’s, AK47’s, etc already out there, as doing that to already held firearms would be a prohibited ex post facto law, but transferring those held firearms as NFA arms would also control access to the most dangerous in terms of mass casualty causing firearms.

Here’s the fun part, in the spirit of full disclosure.
I hunt with one of two rifles, one geared toward high brush areas, the other for long distance. As I haven’t hunted in anywhere where the long distance rifle would be used, I sold it.
I also compete with AR15 and M1A (semiautomatic version of the selective fire M14) and M1911. I’ve won my share of turkeys and hams over the decades.
So, obviously this would impact myself and I still advocate for placing the weapons under the NFA.

I’ll not even go into yahoos I’ve rapidly departed ranges over, with their committing nearly every safety violation imaginable.
Or the idiots who stockpile more ammunition than evern a competition team could use in a decade.

But, I will comment on the idiots who panic buy firearms and ammunition over some paid blogger’s “Obama gun grab” or “This is what gun confiscation looks like”. You impoverish yourselves and your family to buy things that you’ll never use and you and your ilk have caused ammunition shortages that have remained since the Sandy Hook murders.
Stop it, dammit! I’d like to get a brick of .22LR to enjoy some casual range time with my daughters and can’t. You don’t need 897895403478921075890328547839507243589 cases of ammunition, genius.
Hell, I haven’t needed a case of ammunition since I retired from the Army.

The shotgun is a friend’s. He’s a state patrolman. He has a collection of old guns, passed down to him from his ancestors. Not a lot of ammo, though. He’s definitely not an ammosexual. Like responsible gun owners, he keeps everything locked away and out of view of the public. He doesn’t make YouTube videos to show his guns, doesn’t warn his whole neighborhood that he packs heat like my neighbor did. (Neighbor lost his house in a repossession, so I wonder how many mortgage payments he squandered in the guns he had.) Anyway, we were admiring the — as you say — insane capability of that shotgun. It was unloaded, and I didn’t point it at anyone and all that gun safety stuff. In the end, I’m not angry at guns. I’m not about erasing them from existence. It’s about spreading a culture of gun safety, engineering controls to make them safer, teaching conflict resolution, getting people jobs so they don’t turn to crime, and de-stigmatizing mental health problems so suicidal and homicidal people get the help they need.

Christ on a crutch, but you just said that which I’ve attempted to do on left and right forums.
Back in the war, I’d have loved a single barrel, single tube feed firearm.
Here at home, not at all.
Still, if the more sane version would be built, there’d be military contracts out the wahoo.